Go time, I thought.
In a rapid sequence, I straddled the dragon’s neck, jerked the noose to crank his head back, and then opened the noose out enough to work it under the soft flesh of his throat. The dragon reared to life, his giant wings thrashing and scattering treasure. I pulled the noose taut again, wedging the top part into a crevice between two spines on the back of his head.
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch,” I said.
With me still aboard, the dragon climbed a good twenty feet before he ran out of cable. The throttling tension jerked him to the ground. I leapt off and rolled several feet to where I’d left my weapons. Snatching up the flamethrower, I flipped it on and felt it hum in my grip.
The dragon looked wildly around before trying to take off again. When he slammed to the ground a second time, a fragmented gulp issued from his throat. He was calling up a cold blast.
“His face!” I shouted, depressing the trigger and unleashing a gout of fire.
Segundo and Dean did the same. Steam plumed up and water rained around us as the dragon’s icy attack became engulfed in a triple attack of pressurized napalm. With a strangled shriek, the dragon stumbled backwards. We cut our jets, but the napalm continued to burn over the blackened scales of his face, making him look like something demonic.
The dragon crouched low, talons warning us back. Then, using his tail as a booster, he thrust himself skyward. This time the anchoring stalagmite broke off at its stem and dangled from the hawser around the dragon’s neck. He stroked toward the opening high overhead.
“He’s getting away!” Segundo shouted, chasing him with a futile burst of napalm.
I swapped my flamethrower for the M240 and unleashed a withering burst of gunfire. The fusillade tore through the creature’s right wing, crippling him. The White Dragon shrieked as he began to lose altitude. I opened up on the left wing as he flapped and grasped at a wall for purchase. The leather-like material of the wing was tough, but no match for the 240’s armor-piercing ammo. A cluster of perforations appeared, and the dragon plummeted. Rocks spilled with him as he knocked into one wall and then another, talons clawing for purchase.
He landed on the treasure mound with a splash of diamonds and rounded on us. “Fools!” he hissed in a sharp accent. “ Do you know who I am?”
Flames ripped from Segundo’s flamethrower, swallowing the dragon. “We could give two shits.”
This time the dragon didn’t bother with an ice blast. Bursting through the fire, he tail-lashed Segundo to the ground. Dean, who had been stepping forward with his own flamethrower attack, was met by the tail coming the other way. Dean flew through the air several feet before landing in a backward series of somersaults, his weapon clattering away.
As the dragon pounced to finish my men, I caught the dragging chunk of stalagmite he was tethered too and yanked. The force throttled the dragon and slammed him onto his back.
Before he could recover, I choked up on the cord. With a roar, I swung him into a wall. He landed amid a pile of rubble, legs pedaling as he tried to right himself. My chest and biceps swelled as I roared and swung him against another wall. The dragon gagged out a scream.
Spotting a pair of close-set stalagmites, I took off toward them, dragging the dazed dragon behind me. The dragon’s head and neck followed me through the narrow space, but not his enormous body—which was the whole idea. The dragon firmly wedged, I pulled with all my strength, the noose digging deeper and deeper into his leathery neck. His eyes widened above his pale, protruding tongue. His legs and wasted wings kicked futilely.
Segundo and Dean, who had both recovered, came around, flamethrowers aimed. But the creature would never spew another ice blast. His movements were already slowing, the spark of white fire fading from his eyes. After another minute, he stopped kicking altogether. The protective plates relaxed from his empty black orbs. I maintained the tension for another minute before easing back and uncoiling the cable from around my aching hand.
“Holy shit,” Dean breathed. “We just fought a dragon. And won.”
For the past twelve hours, I had been so absorbed in the mission that I had given little thought to what should or shouldn’t exist in this world—only that the mission had to be accomplished. And that had meant killing a dragon. My relieved exhale became a chuckle, which turned into a hoarse laugh. My senior weapons sergeant gave me a perplexed look.
“Sorry, man,” I said. “Just never thought I’d hear those words coming from a soldier who hadn’t completely cracked. And here I am agreeing with you.”
Dean broke into a smile. “And I never thought I’d be taking orders from a werewolf.”
Segundo clapped my shoulder. “Speaking of which, should we go visit the witch? Get you looking halfway handsome again?”
Before I could answer, Hotwire’s voice came through my handheld radio in a staticky burst. “Just got an urgent message from Parker down in the valley,” he said. “They’re under attack. Say again, they’re under attack.”
“Who’s attacking?” I demanded.
“He says it’s the White Dragon.”
“White Dragon?” Segundo repeated. “Then who the fuck is this guy?”
The three of us turned toward the stalagmites, where a young, naked man of Asian persuasion lay on his side. His neck was raw and scored where the noose had dug into his dragon form, but the blood bubbling from his cracked lips told me he was still alive. Barely.
“Must be the nephew,” I said. Which meant that while we had been coming up, the White Dragon had been going down, dammit. And we were hours from being able to back them up. “Try to get them some air support,” I radioed Hotwire. “Anyone you can find. We’ll meet you and head down.”
The wolf in me wanted to snap Ozari’s neck. Instead I stooped and slung his slender body over a shoulder.
“We might need him,” I grunted.
19
Two hours later, I arrived in the valley and crossed the Wari river. Though I’d shed most of my gear to sprint ahead, I already knew I was too late. Hotwire had been sending me updates as he and the rest of the team made their slow way down. He hadn’t been able to secure air support, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. The White Dragon’s attack had been as quick as it was violent. A mess of casualties lay in his wake—Parker among them.
As I raced toward the compound, I could see more buildings in ruins, several glittering with ice. I hustled up to the main gate, the breaths that heaved in and out of my chest clouding the chill air. Ozari, whom I’d stuffed into an insulated suit, slapped against my back, still out. I’d pushed myself to the limit, and for the first time as the Blue Wolf, I felt fatigued.
The inside of the compound was a chaos of downed buildings and villagers in rescue mode. It looked like a nightmarish replay of the night before, except the smells of blood and death were more potent. I spotted Mick, my intelligence sergeant, carrying an injured woman.
“Does anyone need to be dug out?” I shouted.
“No, sir! The buildings were evacuated before the dragon struck. Dead or alive, everyone’s accounted for.”
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“Mauli’s doing trauma care and the others are manning the guns in case the dragon comes back.”
“And Parker?”
He hesitated. “At the casualty point, sir. Follow me.”
We wound past the destroyed buildings to a part of the compound that remained intact, emerging into a sheltered courtyard warmed by several fires. Among the victims knelt several women—the sorceresses—green lights swimming around them. But I could tell by the arrangement of casualties that Mauli was in charge of triaging.
I found him setting up an IV drip for an unconscious man whose arms were bandaged. When my senior medic turned toward me, his eyes were dark and sunken into his face.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Mauli pointed past me. “I did everything I could, Captain. I’m sorry.”
I turned toward the cover
ed bodies and then drifted toward them like a sleepwalker. I was vaguely aware of Ozari sliding off my back and thudding to the ground as I knelt and pulled the blanket from the tallest one’s face.
Parker’s eyes squinted past me, brow furrowed, teeth bared in determination. It was as though he was stuck in time. If I couldn’t have smelled the dead, thawing tissue, couldn’t have heard the absolute silence in his vessels, I would have believed my civil affairs officer was still with us, still facing down the White Dragon.
But he was gone. And he’d done it for me.
As I looked at the first man I’d ever lost, I felt my mind wanting to go silent, like when Billy was having the blood drained from him twenty years ago. Instead, I placed my monstrous hand against Parker’s chest.
“You’re one of the best soldiers I’ve ever served with,” I said, “and a damned good friend. I know you went down doing what you believed in. I know you went down fighting. I just wish I would’ve been there with you. As your captain, as someone you trusted, it was the least you deserved. I’ll visit your mother when I get home. I’ll make sure she knows how much we all loved and depended on you out here. Go in peace, brother.”
I covered his face with the blanket, then stood and peered around, surveying the White Dragon’s destruction. We’d had the same idea—to surprise the other. We’d failed in our respective missions but had imposed devastating costs. At the moment, his felt far more damning.
I caught sight of Nafid tending to someone. Though I couldn’t see the person’s face from my angle, I recognized her smell.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The White Dragon destroyed her shrine before I could get her out,” Nafid said without turning. “Her magic spared her from death, but her legs were crushed.”
I stood beside Nafid and looked down on her great-grandmother. In our prior encounters she had always adjusted her eyeless face to mine, but now, gashed and dusty, it was tipped back, as though she were taking in the stars. Her dark lips moved around a series of mumbles, while her bent fingers twitched over the wooden cube that dangled from her leather necklace.
My gaze moved down to her splinted legs. Nafid was stroking the air above them with her staff, seeming to reinforce the waves of green light that rippled over them. “Will she be all right?” I asked.
“She is dangling between worlds. She may return to ours, or she may slip into the Beyond. Only the Great Maker knows.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And I am sorry about your friend.”
“The young warriors?” I asked quickly. “Are they…?”
“Yes, they are safe.”
I studied the skies, but something told me the White Dragon would not be returning tonight. “Do you know where he went?”
“No, but he may.”
I followed Nafid’s narrowed gaze to where I’d dropped the White Dragon’s nephew. He struggled onto his side and released a weak cough.
Ozari sputtered and shook as I dropped a bowl-full of cold water onto his face. We were inside a small room I’d unofficially requisitioned, a lantern glowing in one corner. The steel cables that secured Ozari to a wooden pallet dug into his wrists and ankles as he strained.
Refilling the bowl in a bucket, I dropped another dollop of the water onto his face. It landed with a slap. His eyelids moved for the first time, trying to blink back the water streaming from his black hair. Thanks to his dragon powers, he looked young, like a kid starting his freshman year of college. But according to Nafid, he was several centuries old.
I set the bowl down and stepped around to where he could see me. The black eyes that focused on me widened in surprise, then turned thin and hateful with recognition. “Y-you are the invader!” he said in a thick accent. “You come to steal! Do you know who I am? Do you know who you steal from?”
“I don’t want your damned treasure,” I snarled. “I want to know where your uncle is. Orzu. The White Dragon.”
“Guards!” Ozari screamed.
“You’re not in your palace anymore, dipshit. And even if you were, your mercenaries are gone. How do you think I was able to turn you into a living wrecking ball and choke you half to death?”
Ozari’s eyes relaxed suddenly and took on a strange glaze. For a second I thought I was losing him, but then I understood: he was peering into the plane Nafid had mentioned, checking on the status of his dragon form.
“Try it,” I challenged. “That cord around your neck might be taut now, but if you shift, your neck is going to grow. I’ll have no problem standing here and watching you strangle yourself to death.”
The glaze left Ozari’s eyes in a flash, and hate filled them once more.
“Where’s your uncle?” I repeated.
“Go ask your momma.”
I’d been insulted by an enemy before, but now my face burned beyond all proportion. “Oh, so that’s how you want to play this,” I growled, a sensation like hot pokers skewering my temples.
Before I could stop myself, I was leaping toward him, my right arm drawn back. I was going to split him open, spill his miserable guts all over the floor.
But a force arrested me. I looked down to find a glowing green web ensnaring me. I struggled from instinct, but the sharp pressure was already withdrawing from my head, my reason taking hold once more. If I killed Ozari, I would lose anything he knew about his uncle’s whereabouts.
“Allow me,” Nafid said.
She walked up beside me, her robes blood streaked from helping her great-grandmother. After studying my face to ensure I was under control, she spoke a word, and the threads of light disappeared into the end of her staff.
“Go ahead,” I breathed and stood back, massaging my temples. I didn’t like these episodes of control loss—and they were getting worse. I thought back to the White Dragon’s words. Was the same spell that empowered my body starting to corrode my mind?
Ozari’s eyes shot back and forth as Nafid knelt on the floor behind his head. “What is the witch doing?” he demanded.
Nafid pressed her hands to his temples and closed her eyes. He began to jerk, trying to shake her off him, but he went still suddenly as a wave of green light cascaded over him. His eyes stared at the ceiling, mouth open, as though he were beholding something heavenly.
“Orzu left him in charge tonight,” Nafid said after a moment, her eyes still closed. “He began to patrol the skies, but the White Dragon’s treasure called to him. A treasure he had long coveted. Before he knew what he was doing, he was wrapped around the wondrous weight of all that wealth. He fell into a drunken sleep. Your arrival awakened him. Your … violent arrival.” She winced and touched her throat as though she were the one being throttled. “And then he awoke here to coldness and wet. He was determined to say nothing about his uncle’s whereabouts, yes, but his uncle had told him nothing. Only that he would be gone for several days and that he, Ozari, was in charge, that he was to defend the fortress.”
Dammit, I thought, squeezing my fists. Dead end.
“But he’d never seen his uncle in such a state as when he returned last night,” Nafid continued. Though it had seemed much longer ago, last night would have been after our encounter. “He was storming around the palace in his human form, half mad with rage. Ozari overheard him on the telephone at one point, telling someone he needed to meet with a buyer who would pay for his next opium yield in advance. He talked about funding an army to wipe out our valley and then hold it by force. He sounded determined.”
“Couldn’t he fund it with his treasure?” I asked.
“A white dragon can part with money, yes, but treasures are to be amassed. In the dragon’s mind, they are measures of his worth. To lose even a small portion of ones hoard can cast a dragon into a deep depression. It is why the larger accumulations are so intoxicating.”
Which explained why Ozari had been so out of it when we’d found him. “Is that where the White Dragon went?” I asked. “To find a buyer.”
Nafid nodded
slowly. “His nephew did not hear this, but he made associations in his mind. I am trying to…” Her words trailed off as her brow creased in concentration. “Yes, his uncle has been courting a buyer in your United States, a man who pays top dollar for opium from this part of the world. But the buyer is paranoid and will only make deals in person. He lives in New York, a place you call Chinatown. His name is Wang Gang, though most call him ‘Bashi.’”
I made mental notes of the information. The White Dragon must have swung through here en route to wherever he kept a plane, maybe to discourage an attack against his fortress while he was gone. I had undermined those plans, but the knowledge gave me no comfort. Not with Parker gone.
Nafid withdrew her hands from Ozari’s head. “That is all I can see right now.”
“That may be all I need to get started. And didn’t you say the farther he strays from his place of creation, the weaker he’ll become? Will he even be able to shift?”
As Nafid stood, green light lingered around Ozari’s head, seeming to hold him in an entranced state. “It’s unlikely,” she replied, “but he’ll have bodyguards.”
Bodyguards or not, finishing him would require little more than a single high-caliber bullet to the head. Something I was equipped to do. The challenge, of course, would be getting to New York.
“I must return to Baba,” Nafid said. “But she wanted me to give you this.” From her gown, she produced the wooden cube I had seen around the old woman’s neck and held it out by its leather strap.
I accepted it and turned the cube over in my hand. “What is it?”
“Many years before I was born, the White Dragon took Baba away. Everyone thought her dead, but she staggered back to the village three days later, her body battered and broken from torture, her eyes gone. It is said that to have seen Baba was to understand the depths of the White Dragon’s evil. When people asked how she escaped, she replied only that the cube had spared her.”
Blue Curse (Blue Wolf Book 1) Page 14